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2024 in review: history behind the headlines
00:46:22
Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter look back at the history behind some of the year's biggest news stories in this special episode of our monthly series
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- [00:01]
Hannah Skoda
This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. With the Gemini app you can talk live and have a real time conversation with an AI assistant. It's great for all kinds of things like if you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or brainstorm creative ideas. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today. Must be 18 to use Gemini Live.
- [00:26]
Rana Mitta
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- [01:44]
Host
Hello and welcome to History behind the Headlines. In each episode, an expert panel will be exploring historical news stories that have caught their eye and the history that will help you make sense of what's going on in the world. Each month I'll be joined by our two regular panelists.
- [01:57]
Hannah Skoda
I'm Hannah Skoda. I'm fellow and Tutor in medieval history at St John's College in Oxford.
- [02:03]
Rana Mitta
I'm Rana Mitta, I'm St. Lee Chair in US Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and I'm a specialist on Modern Chinese history.
- [02:15]
Host
Hannah and Raana, thank you so much as always for being here. We are doing something slightly different with today's episode in that as we go into these final days of 2024, we're looking back at the year's biggest the stories we've missed and some of the major trends and themes. So we're going to start by talking about Discovery of the Year. And Hannah, I believe you've got some contenders for this title.
- [02:38]
Hannah Skoda
Yes, I found it really hard to choose. It's been a really exciting year in archaeological terms, in scientific terms, it's been a year where boundaries are really pushing forward, I think. So I thought I'd start off with the archaeology. I've been really struck by how many amazing discoveries have taken place in the British Isles, often by people with their metal detectors having a look around, see what they can discover. So a particularly important find has been an enormous hoard of Roman coins from the period of the Emperor Nero, and some Iron Age coins in there as well. 1368 altogether discovered near Worcester. They're coins that date from the period of the Roman Republic, so we're talking 157bc to the first part of the first century AD. And the iron Age coins in this hoard were from a local British tribe called the Dubuni, I think. And the idea is that maybe it was a wealthy local farmer who'd been kind of stacking up this hoard, which then someone in 2024 has happily discovered another very, very exciting discovery. 2,584 silver pennies dating from the period of the Norman Conquest were found. This is known as the Chew Valley Hoard in the Southwest. And just the sheer numbers of these coins, absolutely extraordinary. And to me, as medievalist, what's really exciting about this hoard is that there are some coins in there from the reign of Harold ii, the last Anglo Saxon king, and there are some coins from the reign of William the Conqueror. So this really is a hoard which kind of spans that moment of the Norman Conquest. It's thought they were deposited there for safekeeping during a rebellion in the Southwest against William the Conqueror, William I. Which explains why someone might have put this vast number of thousands of coins in a single place. I think from a historian's perspective, obviously, these are amazing, kind of witness to a very turbulent moment in history. In terms of 2024. I think it's a really interesting moment in terms of just how much the contribution of everybody matters to these kinds of discoveries. So detectorists, archaeologists, there's obviously challenges in working together and ensuring that stuff is preserved properly and looked after properly and noted properly. But the potential for new discoveries is really astonishing and exciting.
- [05:08]
Rana Mitta
I think, Hannah, it's a really exciting discovery, as you've said. I find myself aware of the fact that, you know, certainly over a century and more, and really, in a sense, maybe since the 18th century, when people have been looking for antiquities and trying to reconstruct the classical past, The Roman past, a Britain that we've seen discoveries. A question I have is how much would you say that technology and availability, that wider knowledge of archaeology has changed discoveries, at least in Britain, when it comes to these sorts of finds over the last, I don't know, half century or so? I mean, I don't know, were they, were they as frequent back in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, would you say? Or is this, you know, really a product of greater availability of metal detectors or of people just being aware of this kind of history?
- [05:56]
Hannah Skoda
I don't think anybody's done a quantitative study of how many discoveries of this kind have been made over the 20th century, but I certainly have the impression that more and more of these kinds of discoveries are happening. It's not just because of metal detectors and so on. Because of course, you know, amazing discoveries were made in previous decades by people very carefully studying maps or serendipitously when a particular field was being plowed. And those kind of discoveries still happen. There was an amazing discovery this year of a 17th century hoard of coins found by a couple in Dorset when they were renovating their kitchen and they pulled up the concrete floor and found this amazing stash of 17th century coins. So that kind of thing could happen in any era, I think. But I do think there is a kind of democratisation going on at the moment, a sort of widening of specialist knowledge, a real fashion of getting really excited and interested in this stuff and an accessibility of the kinds of materials that one needs to make sense of it. So. So I think it's a really exciting moment in that sense. So my second choice has nothing to do with archaeology at all, it's to do with vaccines. So we're all very aware of the vast difference, that revolutionary difference that Covid vaccines made. We're perhaps a little less aware of vaccines against other diseases such as malaria. And I think in many ways it's rather shameful, actually, that we're not more aware of the huge strides which have been made here. So July 2024 saw the rollout of first vaccine against malaria, which meets the WHO target of 75% efficacy in preventing the disease. It was an opportunity for me to have a little think about the history of vaccines as well, which is intrinsically very, very interesting. So I guess lots of people know that the first vaccine was against smallpox. And actually the evidence suggests that people were aware of a kind of primitive sense of what a vaccine might be way before the modern period. We certainly have evidence that since the 15th century, people were aware that minimal exposure to smallpox might in fact provide some degree of immunity against the disease. There's a wonderful account then in the 18th century by Voltaire, the famous Enlightenment thinker in France, a wonderful account by him of an English aristocratic lady, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who in 1721 apparently wanted her daughters inoculated, as she'd seen done in Germany, and she wanted them inoculated against smallpox. And this is before we think about the invention of vaccines. And Voltaire was terribly impressed that this woman was so progressive and forward thinking about this. The key Moment then is 1774, Benjamin Jesty, who starts to realise that cowpox might be something which one could use to produce an immunity against smallpox. And then of course Edward Jenner is the key figure who's gone down in history as inventing this. And this of course gives us the modern word vaccine as well, from the Latin vacca, meaning a cow. So it all originates with this related disease of cowpox.
- [09:01]
Rana Mitta
I think that's a fascinating set of medical developments there, Hannah. There's also, I think a slightly more dubious connection, but one that I'll just mention, which has to do with malaria and colonialism in that clearly one of the things that made it more difficult for European nations to occupy and colonize large parts of the non western world in the 18th and 19th century was the fear of malaria in parts of Asia and parts of Africa. And I think there are at least some suggestions that one of the great colonial era drinks, which is tonic water mixed with gin or other products, went in that direction at least because the quinine contained inside the tonic, which of course makes it more bitter, also might provide some sort of anti malarial protection. Although frankly I think this fantastic new vaccine is probably rather more effective than having a couple of gins and tonics, but a sign that the wider medical progress and you know, social and political change do often go hand in hand.
- [10:01]
Hannah Skoda
I think that's fascinating and I shall certainly think about that the next time I enjoy my gin and tonics. So my third choice for a discovery is to do with AI. I think we can't really talk about scientific advances and discoveries in 2024 without confronting the huge challenges and opportunities that AI and developments in this area are presenting us with. So my way into this was thinking about a robot called Ada, spelt a I D A and this robot is apparently an artist, was developed by Aidan Mellor. She's named after she it they named after Ada Lovelace, who many people claims the first computer programmer. I'm not sure one can necessarily identify a first person, but clearly a very, very important figure in the development of computer programming. Ada Lovelace was Lord Byron's daughter. She's someone, actually, I've always been interested in because I play the harp. And Ada Lovelace was the patroness of a Welsh harpist, a triple harpist called John Thomas. Anyway, Ada Lovelace, when she wasn't being a patron of harpists, was busy developing computer programs. So this robot is named after her and is known for their rather extraordinary images that they produce. And of course, it raises all kinds of completely intriguing questions about how we think about what constitutes creativity, how do we think about what constitutes authenticity? How do we think about what constitutes authorship? Who is responsible for these things? Is it the robot? Is it the person who programmed the robot? Is it the physical person who in many cases actually completes the sculpture or painting that this robot has come up with an idea for? It's really very, very troubling and, I suppose, exciting. I lean slightly more to find it troubling. But one thing that's really struck me, actually, is how many of These DEB about Ada, the robot artist, really resonate with debates in the 15th century Renaissance as well, which is a period when they were certainly not thinking about artificial intelligence. But it is a period when they are confronting and engaging with the rise of the celebrity artist. So they're thinking really carefully about artistry and what it means to be an individual producing a work of art. They are challenging what it means to be creative in new ways, and they're articulating these in ways which look very, very different to what this one finds in the 13th and 14th centuries. They're thinking about authenticity in new ways. In the Middle Ages, no one really cares about whether something's authentic or not. That's not a concept they think with. In the 15th century, authenticity, as opposed to something which has been copied or possibly forged, becomes a huge issue. And they are the same kinds of questions, I think, that AI raises for us now. So in some ways, I find it quite comforting to think that the challenges we're facing now are not entirely alien to the sorts of questions that figures like the great Italian humanists like Leonardo Bruni in the late 14th century or the early 15th century painters, figures like Raphael and so on, are engaging with in terms of how they're thinking about what it means to be a creative individual. This robot, Aida, was actually made in 2019, but has made waves in 2024 because one of her artworks has just sold for $1.1 million. And Ada is known specifically for her self portraits as well. Can a robot produce a self portrait? It has no consciousness. What does this tell us about the notion of portraiture, of selfhood? And again, these are all questions which figures like Leonardo da Vinci are completely obsessed with in the 15th century.
- [13:54]
Rana Mitta
I think that that question of how you define the self is such an important one when it comes to thinking about artificial intelligence. But actually, as you say, it has that much longer history. Not just the Italian Renaissance, but again, many other societies, I think, have spent a long time debating who and where you can find that strange spark, whether you want to call it consciousness or whether you want to call it self awareness, or whether you want to call it even moral consciousness. Back in the 17th, 18th century, for instance, in Imperial China, one of the things that exercised many of the great imperial administrators time at a time, remember when European derived, Christian derived concepts was not yet a major part of the Confucian structures within which Chinese government operated at that time, it still became very important to work out who could be regarded as a moral actor, an actor who could be regarded as responsible for their own actions and praised or condemned for that being the case. And the question of whether or not ordinary people had this concept was very, very widely debated at the time. But my concern, I think I should slightly share your concern as well as your excitement, Hannah, about the prospect of AI is something that as academics we need to raise an eyebrow about. But the other eyebrow has to be raised, I think, as podcasters, because this is the ability now of certain AI programs to take academic articles, could be on history, could be anything else. But let's say history, as we're both historians, you know, you feed them in and then you can get basically a very, very effective podcast of 15 or 20 minutes with a man and a woman talking to each other about the contents of those articles. And I have to say, having heard bits and pieces, it can sound extremely convincing. Both voices have a kind of natural timbre to them. They have the past even to make kind of the odd joke, not necessarily very good jokes. But then not all academics are necessarily known for the high quality of their humor anyway, as we know. I mean, I hope in January that you and me going to be back here, Hannah, and that the BBC doesn't decide that it's cheaper and more effective to essentially throw in a few academic articles and get AI to do the. The podcast. Looking at mat here with pleading eyes at this point, who knows what 2025 will bring. @ any rate, I think the One thing we can say is that when it comes to the academic world and the world of history, we probably haven't yet even begun to imagine the ways in which those fields will be changed by AI. But change they clearly will be.
- [16:15]
Host
So the next category we're going to be talking about is Book of the Year. There's been some great titles published this year. Rana, did you want to kick us off with this one?
- [16:23]
Rana Mitta
Absolutely. And I will start by saying that I've got a kind of a bit of a busman's holiday or busman's workday, I would say on this because amongst other, you know, great experiences I had during this this year was being chair of judges for the Cundill History Prize, which is, I think the most lucrative and certainly one of the most well respected. The two don't always go to together, but in this case they do prizes for the writing of history in the English speaking world. And the winner this year actually was a wonderful book by Kathleen Duvall called Native nations, which is about the history of indigenous peoples of North America over more than a millennium. But if I may, I'm going to cheat slightly and you know, having given huge praise and really enjoyed so much that that wonderful book by Kathleen Duval, to flag up a book that's more of my own area and was also in the finalists trio for this particular prize and that was the book Judgment of Tokyo by the Princeton historian Gary Bass. The reason I want to bring this up is, first of all, I do think it is a fantastic piece of writing for reasons I'll explain in a minute. But also within the last couple of weeks, I would say that the headlines have thrown up a very interesting historical connection to this book that I do want to mention. So first of all, let me say something about the book itself. It is a prodigious piece of research. I imagine it must have taken 10 years or more to research because what it is is an investigation of the process behind and during one of the most important war crimes trials of the 20th century. I think everyone listening to this, you know, being history buffs, will know about the Nuremberg Trials where the Nazis were put on trial in 1945. 46, maybe slightly fewer may be aware that simultaneously, Almost simultaneously, actually, 1948, there was a similar trial in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far east imtfe, sometimes just known as the Tokyo Trial, in which war crimes against Asian peoples committed by the Japanese Empire during their invasion and occupation of asia in the 1930s and 40s was put on trial. And although There have been books on this. There are lots of books in Chinese and lots of books in Japanese on the subject. There have been relatively few in English and I think I can say safely, none as comprehensive as this. Gary Bass gone and done interviews with the family of the Chinese judge who was there. Gone to archives around Asia, Europe and North America to find details on all of these various judges. And one of the things that makes it most distinctive is that unlike previous histories of this particular trial, it makes it very much about what Asian peoples did to each other and how they sought a combination of retribution and reconciliation between the. The two. So, of course, the Japanese Empire, as well known, committed a variety of really terrible war crimes. The, the massacre in. In Nanjing in China in 1937, 38, the Bataan death March in. In the Philippines. You can, you can name others. And although of course there were prominent Australian, American and British judges involved, there's been less of a telling of the story of Mei Ruao, the Chinese judge who was there as one of the last acts of the Nationalist government at that time, or Delafin Garanilla, the Filipino judge who was there also looking at the question of how war crimes had been committed against his peoples. And also one of the most controversial characters, the Indian judge, Radha Bernard Pal, who actually was the only one to acquit all of the Japanese leaders and military figures who were put on trial at Tokyo, saying that actually they'd done nothing different from any European empire and they should be released. Everyone else voted guilty, and of course many of the Japanese were either sentenced to death or to terms of imprisonment. And I just wanted to sort of cap this by saying, although the book itself is a wonderful work of history, very readable, you know, takes you through the stories of these people and makes you kind of live their lives. It is wonderful. It really came to my mind last week. I was actually in Asia last week doing kind of a very quick kind of whistle stop tour through Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. And in each of those places, very aware that of course, you know, they're vibrant places in the modern era era, but they're also all places that were occupied by the Japanese at one point or another. And when it was announced, I think as we speak about a week ago, it would have been very, I think, 3rd of December, that martial law was briefly declared by the South Korean president. And then he could have quickly undeclared it a few hours later, but it didn't stop him being impeached by his own parliament a few days after that. It reminded me of how much hidden history there is. So much of the analysis at the time was about, you know, was he trying to overcome parliament? Why would he do this? But actually, it's often not appreciated that the terrible events of World War II in some form still underpin the politics of many of the countries of East Asia. They still run in this kind of river of anger and resentment between Japan and South Korea. And within South Korea, people on the right wing, some of whom have a particular sort of connection through older generations to that period of Japanese occupation, and some on the left who still regarded their own what they see as a sort of struggle against forces of conservatism and often blame those wartime years for kind of bringing that culture to Korea in the first place. All of these are more complex stories, but this World War II period of Japanese occupation has never really gone away in the politics of Korea, of Taiwan, of Japan, and of a whole variety of countries in the region. And so it really is in the title of our podcast, History behind the Headlines, as well as Gary Bass book being a fascinating piece of deeply researched history that's extremely readable.
- [22:04]
Host
Thank you so much. Rana and Hannah, was there books that stood out for you this year?
- [22:08]
Hannah Skoda
Yes, my choice is very, very different kind of book. I thought I'd pick something medieval because not just because I'm a medievalist, but I thought quite often the medieval books tend to get a little bit sidelined. But this is a wonderful text by a German historian called Annette Koenal, and it's been translated under the title the Green Medieval Innovations in Sustainability. So what she's doing is really challenging the idea that the way we do things now is the only way that's possible to do things. I think quite often we get sucked into a very ahistorical sense of inevitability, that this is the way things have turned out. So we're kind of stuck with it. But of course, as historians, we know that everything is contingent, and the past presents us with a whole series of visions of how things could have turned out differently and of possibilities for doing things differently, which is a very different thing from saying we can draw lessons from the past. And I don't think any of us would really want to say that, but we certainly can say that we can look to the societies of the past to explore other ways of looking at reality, other ways of managing our societies, and think a little bit more openly and capaciously and expansively about what we have now. So her particular take is thinking about the environment and sustainability and she teases out from a very, very long view of medieval society. She teases out a range of ways in which we might think differently about sustainability. So a few examples. She talks about sort of frugality and minimalism. And so the Franciscan order in the Middle Ages, who are an order who swore themselves to absolute poverty, actually didn't go very well. They end up very rich. But anyway, they claimed that they were going to live by begging and not accumulate wealth. They're a very interesting example for thinking about how we think about property and ownership. She discusses possibilities of communal living. Of course, if we look to medieval monastic contexts, we are provided with really fascinating examples of communal management of resources, not ones that we would want necessarily to replicate straightforwardly in our own societies, but they open up possibilities, as she puts it. She's trying to inspire, to awaken our sense of the possibilities out there and help us think outside now defunct thought patterns. Actually, one of the most interesting examples she turns to are beguinages in the late medieval Low Countries. So beguinage are a bit like monastic communities, but these were lay people who could take sort of quasi monastic vows, live communally, but within their urban communities. Women took a very prominent role in these communities and they're known in particular for their urban gardens as well. So they have a very, very interesting way of generating resources communally within late medieval cities. She talks about a kind of make, do and mend sort of culture in the Middle Ages. And that's rather interesting because I think we associate the make do and mend sort of attitude, and obviously the particular phrase with a kind of Second World War blitz spirit sort of thing. But in the Middle Ages, it's nothing to do with a sense of crisis, it's just embedded in the culture and it's thoroughly professionalised as well. The ways in which particular workshops in cities specialise in mending and reusing and adapting stuff that people have got already. And then she has a very interesting section about microfinance as well. So for people who are interested in financial histories, the Middle Ages turn out to be a wonderfully rich repository of examples of managing finances very differently. So one of her case studies is late Medieval Basel, where she finds a series of kind of micro loans which were structuring sort of social networks and allowing people at a very kind of humble economic level to live reasonably prosperous lives by kind of sharing resources in this microfinance sort of way. So it's a wonderfully readable book, I think, a lovely example of how one can use the past to open up fresh ways of thinking about things.
- [26:27]
Host
Thank you both so much. We have interviewed both Gary and Annette on the History Extra podcast this year and you can hear those conversations. There's a link in the episode description. The next thing we're going to be talking about is event of the year. Hannah, did you want to kick off with this one?
- [26:41]
Hannah Skoda
Yes. So I don't have a single event. I picked lots of events. I think one of the things that has been so striking about 2024 is the sheer number of elections. So if we think about what future historians might think when looking back at this year, they are of course going to have to confront the fact that just an enormous number of countries around the globe held elections this year. So obviously in the UK we had a general election in July. The US had its election in November. There was an election in France in July which produced this kind of knife edge result. And where we're seeing the sort of ongoing waves from that now. Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, the European Parliament, the list goes on. It's absolutely extraordinary. One figure I came up with was that over 80% of these Democratic elections this year have seen the incumbent party lose power. So it's been a year of great change and turmoil. One of the things that really strikes me, actually is the ways in which we might reflect in coming years about shifting electoral patterns as well and the shifting nature of the electorate. And so, quite apart from the sort of specific political changes which have happened in all these regions, I don't think we've had a year quite like this since 1905. I think that's the last time that something quite this dramatic happened in terms of numbers of elections and in terms of this overturning of incumbents. And of course, 1905 is also very, very interesting year in terms of shifting patterns of who gets to vote. Rana, did you want to come in here?
- [28:16]
Rana Mitta
Yeah. Well, 1905 is a wonderful thing to bring up in various ways. And one is it's the time that you have basically a liberal revolution in Russia which increases the electorate there. But it's also a reminder of quite how recent the period is when mass elections, you want to call it that, you know, wide scale elections really have been. The era of democracy is a very modern one. I was put in mind actually of thinking of a film which I saw the other day, which is very much set in the modern era, but has a rather medieval feel about it, and that's the movie Conclave, based on the fictional version of the election collection of a pope from the. The Thriller by Robert Harris. Have you seen the film Hannah?
- [28:54]
Hannah Skoda
I've not yet seen it. It's on my Christmas list to watch.
- [28:57]
Rana Mitta
Definitely well worth seeing. But even though I'm sure you'll be aware of the plot, and I'm sure many of our listeners will too. You know, basically it's sort of intrigue and skullduggery, but one thing is it's centered on an election. It really is people voting. You put a name into the. The ballot box and eventually the Pope emerges. I suppose we talked about this in an earlier podcast, but it's just worth, you know, perhaps riffing on. This again is that must be. That must be one of the earliest examples of sort of in the sense that we understand them being used to choose a member of an elite. Obviously you have kind of, you know, classical Greece and so forth, but cases are fairly rare outside something like a papal election all the way up to the 20th century, would you say?
- [29:36]
Hannah Skoda
Yes, I think that must be true. I think papal elections have been an extraordinary case study. And a case study not just in the sort of obvious aspects of voting and putting names into a hat and who you choose and so on, but in the secrecy of it, in the managing of kind of visibility and invisibility in the discussions around who gets to participate. One of the most interesting moments for me as a medieval historian is the 15th century movement to try and resolve the papal schism when this whole system had gone completely wrong and they ended up electing more than one pope. And when they try to resolve that, there are long discussions about who gets to vote, who is representing who in terms of how they cast their vote and so on. I think it's a very, very striking case, case study and how these systems evolve.
- [30:21]
Rana Mitta
I mean, again, it's a reminder. You talk about secrecy and of course that's something even in democratic elections, you know, broad mass elections, relatively recent in Britain and America. I think they referred in the 19th century to the secret ballot, as we'd now call it as the Australian ballot, because actually it was the Australians who brought in that system first, of not actually telling anyone else who you were voting for. Whereas, of course, we have wonderful stories. Well, perhaps not so wonderful if you're part of them from the 18th century in Rotten boroughs in England where basically electors are bribed to, you know, with food and drink to go and vote for someone or other. But then it's very clear because you have to stand on the right side as to who you're actually voting for. And again, it's Only in historical terms, really quite recently, that that system of secret voting has become universal and applied across all sorts of elections. But actually it is something to do with an election. And I have to say, one of the more dark elements that I did want to just bring up as an event of the year, if I want to call it that. And that's two, really. And it's to do with assassinations. One foiled and one sadly successful. We remember that, of course, back in the summer, there was an attempt on the life of Donald Trump, who was then the candidate for the Republican nomination. And more recently, in December, the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of a healthcare company in the US on the streets of New York. And the reason I brought this together is that it flagged up again something that is, I think, uniquely distinctive to the United States, certainly as what you might call a kind of rich democratic country. The prevalence of firearms. That comes again through a strongly historical element, which is the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which provides these quite heavily disputed words about a well armed militia being necessary for essentially the maintenance of the state. The right of citizens to bear arms shall not be infringed. Now, those words have been tossed back and forth by lawyers, by politicians, by the Supreme Court, but I found myself actually also reading a wonderful book earlier this year, Andrew McKevitt, historian based out of Tennessee. It's called Gun country and it's about the American development of a gun culture, actually during the second half of the 20th century. It's not the whole history of it. And although the broad trajectory of that story and the many tragedies that we can think of involving unrestricted gun use are Perhaps well known, McKevitt, as a historian, comes up with some either reminders for things we sort of knew but had forgotten. And actually I think some genuine discoveries that are extraordinary. One is that one of the reasons that there were as many guns flooding the US in the 1940s, 50s and 60s was there were huge numbers of leftover guns from World War II in Europe, where someone had to do something with them and they all got shipped over. Not all, but significant numbers got sold and shipped over to the United States. So that was one sort of of easy source of firearms in a continental Europe that was no longer wanting to, you know, authorise violence on the streets where the war was over and they went to the US instead. And then the emergence also of a culture what became known as the Saturday Night Special, I mean, rather sort of flippant term for a disturbing thing, which was the use by you know, criminals and so forth, of easily available firearms, which again gave rise to a culture of fear, part justified, part hyped up up about what that kind of firearm culture could do, but notable until really relatively recent decades, that there was much more of an open debate actually in American society about how much and how far you could allow usage and how far you could restrict firearms. I would say that these days the emphasis has moved much more towards the very libertarian end. I mean, again, the idea that any restriction on personal firearms is now quite hard to place into the culture. Note that even the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris, felt it necessary to say in one of her interviews that she owned a Glock personal revolver and that anyone coming into her house would be shot. Which I have to say would be an intriguing statement for a British, French or German politician to make in the midst of an election. So those, you know, horrific gun related events in 2024 did set me thinking a bit more about the historical and some not always predictable background that led us to where we are today in terms of the US's relationship with firearms.
- [34:38]
Host
It's a really interesting subject. I spoke to Andrew earlier this year and the link for that one is in the description as well. We've just got five minutes left together before the end of the year and I thought we should end by talking about something slightly uplifting compared to all the sort of doom and gloom that has gone around at various points this year. And that's a reason to be cheerful. Rana, did you want to kick off with that one?
- [34:57]
Rana Mitta
Yes, I think that I'm going to talk about energy and although it might seem at first glance, particularly when we've had, I think, a problematic, I think it's the best, most tactful adjective for it. COP meeting most recently in Baku and Azerbaijan and we've probably got more dispute than perhaps we would have done a few years ago in terms of how far and how fast fossil fuels are going to be reduced and green energy is going to come forward. But why should it be a reason nonetheless for a more optimistic forward look? I think the answer is that if you look at the bigger picture, the sense that the world inexorably and inevitably is moving to a post fossil fuel energy environment, broadly speaking, it may come sooner rather than later, but we'll see through electric vehicles, through the use of green technology, that I think is pretty hard to reverse, even though the pace may yet to be determined. If we take the historical perspective, in a sense, we can see how far this has moved us we haven't really talked about the Middle east much, even though that's obviously been a huge news story itself during the year. But if we think about why the Middle east was such a contentious area, many reasons 50 years ago, half a century ago, one of them was clearly the essential nature of access to fossil fuels in a highly geopolitically volatile area. The Middle Eastern oil production and the ability of the Saudis or other countries to sort of raise or lower oil prices was an absolutely central thing. You know, the 1973 World Financial Crisis was an energy crisis, amongst others. And of course, metaphors of morality, historical morality, emerged around that, too. Japanese cars, which were much less gas guzzling in the 80s, were often referred to as frugal, which actually, I think medievalists would recognize that as the kind of adjective which suggests, you know, like the book you were talking about, Hannah, you know, trying to make do in men, trying to sort of. Of take a smaller car and not waste so much energy. And then at times of high oil prices, American Cadillacs and, you know, big gleaming stainless steel cars would be back in fashion. I think the debates are now very different because the conversation about energy is so different, partly because some places do have more domestic production, but also because geopolitics and a variety of shocks around the world have led people to push in the direction of saying that actually the energy sustainability story has to underpin whatever the next phase of progress for humanity is. And overall, yeah, I think that's going to be a good story, even though there will be plenty of bumps along the way.
- [37:23]
Host
And finally to you, Hannah, what's your reason to be cheerful? As we look to the future, I.
- [37:28]
Hannah Skoda
Was going to focus on a very particular moment, which was the reopening of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in December 2024. So Notre Dame was built between 1163 and 1270 ish. It is, as everybody knows, one of the most glorious Gothic cathedrals in Europe. It's an absolutely exquisitely beautiful building, which I think, whatever your beliefs, fills you with a sense of awe and uplifts you when you step into it. And of course, it very tragically caught fire, and a huge amount of it was destroyed, burned to the ground in 2019. So it's been an enormous project to kind of literally resurrect it from the ashes, and really rather extraordinary to see it reopening this year, I think, amidst very turbulent times, particularly in France. So it feels emblematic in many ways as a sort of sign of hope. But I think it's also indicative of our attitude towards heritage more generally. And I think there's a lot to celebrate there. I think we're more attuned than ever to the importance of our heritage, whether that be buildings or paintings or other forms of material remains. And more than this, I think we're more than ever attuned to the complexities of these legacies from the past. And I think the kind of public discussions which are happening about these at the moment have the potential to open things up in a really constructive way. I think we think much more carefully now about what these material remains from the past are for, who they're for, who they should include, whose history it is. I think these kinds of debates, which I know can become very fraught, have the possibility to provide us with really productive questions for thinking about the past and to think about the future equally in ways which are more expansive and more hopeful.
- [39:25]
Host
That sounds like a lovely way to end this episode. Hannah Rana, thank you so much for being with us over the past 12 months talking through the history behind the headlines. I will talk to you both again in the new year, but for now, thank you very much.
- [39:36]
Rana Mitta
Have very happy holidays to everyone, and Happy New Year.
- [39:39]
Hannah Skoda
Yes, and to you. We'll look forward to seeing you in 20.